Many of the group's recruits may indeed be young losers who seek some kind of absurd meaning in war and death, as pointed out by French scholar Olivier Roy. But it is a mistake to see ISIS itself as divorced from religion. An important element in the groups' violent world view is a fringe, apocalyptic theology, fueled by the instability and change that are convulsing the Middle East. [...]
An important element in this worldview, then, is an eschatology (i.e. a teaching about the end of the world and the destiny of mankind) which is apocalyptic. This worldview is presented in the 2015 book "The ISIS Apocalypse" by William McCants.
In our view, it is not really possible to understand these Islamic visions of the end of time and of the destiny of mankind without placing them in the wider context of Jewish and Christian eschatology. Throughout history the three Abrahamic religions have shared concepts about God and time. For instance, the Prophet Jesus is a key figure in the apocalyptic tradition of Islam. [...]
ISIS' answer is that a good Muslim sacrifices his or her life to the Caliphate not simply because it is an ideal religious state, but because the world needs to be prepared for the last days. The establishment of the Caliphate is an element in the sequence of events leading to Judgment Day. The Caliphate, in its unrelenting strictness, is a mechanism that prepares the world for Judgment. Under the Caliphate, the "hypocrisy" of human power is proven to be false, as the Caliphate exercises only the word of God. [...]
The French scholar Jean-Pierre Filiu claimed in 2008 ("Apocalypse in Islam") that new forms of apocalypticism are spreading in the Middle East in response to violent political upheavals. Filiu points to Muslim kitsch literature in Arabic where Christian fantasies about the end of the world are woven together with contemporary political events. The 9/11 attacks were often discussed in such terms while the breakdown of Iraq and Syria, with unfathomable human suffering, has created fertile ground for theological fantasies about the end of times.
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